


Intervention

by xathira



Series: Prince of the Unknown [20]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Beast Wirt, Other, Prince!Wirt AU, hurt with little comfort, one-sided screaming match, the truth comes out oop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: Wirt has nowhere left to run, no more lies to hide behind.
Series: Prince of the Unknown [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516961
Comments: 32
Kudos: 142





	Intervention

**Author's Note:**

> Back at it again with an angsty, dialogue-heavy installment!
> 
> If you're new to this series, welcome! You'll have to start at the beginning to understand what's going on - see you when you catch up ;)
> 
> HUGE thanks to Whiggity for beta-reading the first two-thirds of Part 20. Superstar, over there.

The angry push-pull of Beatrice’s lungs and the hammer of her heartbeat are the only sounds Wirt hears. The rest of the world has quieted, submitting to a natural force seemingly more destructive than itself. Even the storm above the barn draws away, as if the sky has inhaled clouds and rain and lightning and held them fearfully back—because that is what The Beast is doing. His chest is taut with terror. He dares not make a sound. Not when Beatrice’s glare is glinting back his bilious yellow panic-light as if to set him ablaze.

“If you’re thinking about pawning your soul off on Holly again, I’ve got news for you: she’s not touching it.” Beatrice wields her words like a whip that’ll crack Wirt if he interrupts. “ _Ever._ And neither is anyone else in your equine cult, so you can go ahead and scrap any hope that they’ll save you from _me._ ” 

She shifts herself so that her knees clamp his calves; in a single quick motion her hands are fisting his shadow-woven shirt near the collar and she’s sitting on his hooves, giving Wirt no blink of time to weasel free. He’d be impressed with the wrestling tricks she learned from her all siblings if he weren’t gagging back groans of pain. 

_Keep it together, don't slip…_

The redhead sneers pitilessly. Wirt’s stomach plunges into his pelvic bowl and the acidic discs of his eyes widen as Beatrice pushes her face toward his. “I know you’re hiding something. You’re putting on some stupid _act_ and I can see right through it so cut the shit. Or else.”

She’s bullying him. She’s sensed enough of the ruse to suspect him but she still hasn’t totally figured it out, so Wirt has a sliver of room to maintain his mask and misdirect. He smiles though she cannot see it and tips his head eerily to the side so Beatrice won’t notice that he’s only able to sit up because she’s _holding_ him.

“You _want_ there to be an act… don’t you?” asks The Beast. 

Stray raindrops tap the barn roof. Beatrice blinks at him, lips parted, incensed that her typical bull-charge failed to obliterate his barrier. With a yell muffled behind her teeth she thrusts him back down on the hay, knuckles indenting the skin stretched over his ribs.

“You… _you damn bastard!_ I am so _sick_ of you hauling me around like a dog, making me miserable…!” Her voice wobbles, yet Beatrice stubbornly reins it in with a harsh intake of air that robs the oxygen from Wirt’s own lungs. It requires a couple seconds for her to pick what to spit next. “Wh… Why? Why did you drag me through the woods for so long? Were you trying to get me killed by witches?!”

If Wirt says yes, she’ll ask him why he didn’t simply kill her in person. She’ll want to know the significance of sacrifices made to The Beast, when Wirt has no solid understanding himself. If he says _no,_ it will sound like he had a plan beyond making Beatrice suffer… and that’s too close to the truth. 

_Don't slip… she needs to hate me. Safer. Kindness in the form of cruelty._

He commands himself to meet the bright sear of her irises and says nothing.

Beatrice shrieks through gritted molars and shakes him, throttling a weak bleat from his contused chest. When he tries to claw her hands away she tugs the fabric in her hands tighter, growling. “I’ve seen _kittens_ scratch harder. You weren’t so gentle with me in the swamp, remember?”

“You want me to h̓űṙt͕ y͖o̽u̜?” Wirt intends malice and threat; he gives snide childish sullenness. Sweat studs his temples and wets his blood-soaked back. He hardly had strength to perform his Beastly role earlier tonight—and Beatrice is holding him hostage for an encore. His focus greys. “You want me to t̋e̗a̹c̉h͈ ̥yȯu ̐a͈ ̒ḷes͛s̾o͂n̚ ̤i̻n͋ ̗r̒e͓s̽p̰e̾c̬t, _B́ḽu̔e̺b̻iͅr̟d̽?_ ”

Her eyebrows fork steeply downward. She pulls him closer by the collar. “What’s stopping you?”

And Wirt has no choice but to take his cue.

The Beast summons an explosive snarl and lunges toward her, talons hitting her shoulders to shove her off. Beatrice recoils from the burst of rage, the force of his hit—but she does not unhook him from her hold. Using his own sloppy momentum the young woman yanks Wirt from his hay bed—his palms braced on her collar bones—and twists them both off the slope and tumbling onto the packed dirt floor of the barn.

Beatrice, predictably, rolls herself back on top of him in almost the same invincible pose; Wirt lands on his back, on the injury that spreads and sinks into him like rot eating into the core of an apple. Pain cinches his vision into a black keyhole. He has no arms or legs or head—only a lone white-hot spear where his vertebrae used to stack. His jaw drops to release a silent scream. His claws—his lack of claws, detached and separated from the blare of his spine—fall away from Beatrice and curl reflexively to his sternum, under the knot of Beatrice’s fingers in his shirt.

“Is that it?” Beatrice demands incredulously. Pieces of hay stick up from her hair like pinfeathers. “What the hell is—”

“You leave him alone!”

Holly rushes into the barn, out of breath, sweeping in the smell of grass and apples. She notes The Wanderer staring blankly up at the barn rafters, spotlighting the underside of the roof with bitter ochre; Beatrice straddling him like a murderous highway robber; the toppled lantern flickering on its side. “Leave him _alone,_ Beatrice,” Holly projects, voice a high-pitched whinny. “I know you hate him, but you can’t—”

“Don’t take another step,” Beatrice orders the Appleonian coldly. Her attention knifes back to the Beast at her mercy. “You heard her coming, didn’t you? That’s why you’re holding back… wouldn’t want to accidentally reveal what a monster you are, huh?” She jostles him, and his skull bounces limply against the ground. He draws his forearms tighter to his chest. “God _damn_ it, answer me! Talk! Fight back! I told her about the lantern, _Wirt,_ she knows all about how you devour lost souls, what the oil’s _really_ for, so you don’t have to pretend you’re not a god-damned parasite!” 

Beatrice is wrong. Wirt can never stop pretending. He has to pretend forever that he doesn’t care about her, that he’s beyond redemption, because Beatrice needs to seize her freedom and stay far away from him and live her life with her family the way she’s supposed to. She has to be a ruthless Lantern-Bearer that the Woodsman will trust and others will respect. Wirt is laboring to rip their tangled roots apart but Beatrice is digging in like a _weed—_

“This is going too far,” Holly insists. The equine girl inches closer and Beatrice practically hisses in warning, madness pouring from her like steam off a live coal. “I don’t want to have to bring anyone here, but I will…”

Wirt is touching dirt. The earth. He can escape if he wants to, dissolve out of Beatrice’s clutches like sand… only it’s hard to lose himself when he hurts and he can’t expand his lungs and he hurts—

“I want the truth,” Beatrice shouts. It’s a furious sob that flecks Wirt’s face with saliva and tears. 

He looks up at her through an amber haze. He tries the last line in his script he can think of, hoarse and beaten with nowhere to go, true enough that it cuts him inside to say it. “The truth?” The Beast whispers. “The truth is… your s-sͨúf͚f̰e͑r̩ĩn̄gͬ… m̋e̍aͨn͐i̳n̚g͕l̓e͔s̖s̉ and drawn out… watching you sc-scramble for an… a͕n̼ ̖a̤n̐s͌w̃e̥r̳…” He forces a threadbare chuckle that tastes like copper. “It makes me f-feel less… ǎl͔o̱n͓e̫. Because now you know… _ḙ̪xͤ̈a͔̒c̤̱tl̪y͊́_... how I feel.” 

Beatrice stares at him. Stricken. Her death-grip on his shirt eases imperceptibly. Without shifting her red-rimmed eyes from the void of his face, she…

She unknots her fists and sets her palms over his lightly spasming chest. Feeling the heartbeat inside, which speeds at this unwanted gentleness. Wirt can see his despair creep cobalt into the outer ring of his eye-glow, mixing nauseous green where it splashes struts and beams and Beatrice’s facade alongside yellow. No… what is she _doing,_ what is going through her mind, Beatrice has to take the lantern and _get out, abandon him, go leave get out hate him—_

“Wirt,” Beatrice rasps. “Did you really kill Greg?”

What? That isn't in the script… Beatrice is going off book, Wirt must direct her back to her role. "G...G͙̔o͇̞n̮ͬê. Greg is gone."

"Where?" Fingertips press at him, imploring. Beatrice's head, neck, and shoulders bow as her anger slides ponderously from her frame. Her voice is not a whip, but an open hand, extended with no fear of retaliating teeth. 

Should he give her the location of a random Edelwood and hope she falls for it? Why would she even _ask..._ why would she doubt…

Hands cradling his face. No more suspension of disbelief. Wirt knows he is doomed by the flat sadness etched in Beatrice's expression, her fury nothing but cooling ash, her deadpan certainty that this Beast cannot or will not actually harm her in a way that could wreck her. A pleading snarl rattles from below Wirt's jaw. "I don't have a brother," he flounders. "I hated him. I'm glad he's..."

Beatrice pulls him into a hug and the final spark in his brain shorts out.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Equine eyes see better in the dark than those of humans, yet Holly is left behind in the wake of Beatrice’s sprint to the barn. The redhead follows some unfailing inner compass while a slower bewildered Appleonian labors to catch up in the gloom, chasing the bob and dip of the Dark Lantern’s shine.

The Dark Lantern which… holds The Wanderer’s soul? That he uses to… to _feed?_ Holly tries to incorporate this new knowledge in her schema of Appleonia’s savior but it fits as poorly as a wrong puzzle piece, a razor-edged shape that will tear her established beliefs if she forces it too much. A headache forms under her forelock. She flags behind Beatrice and the lantern and reaches the barn minutes after her unstable guest has rushed inside.

What happens to the souls that The Wanderer’s flame consumes? Do they live on in the fire? Are they converted into something new, transformed to pure heat and the rainbows that light The Wanderer’s eyes? Do they simply… disappear…?

The cruelty of that lattermost possibility has Holly leaning dizzily against the white fence surrounding the barn. Then she hears a guttural roar—and runs toward it.

Holly has felt grief. But she has no name for the sheer rawness that makes a mask of Beatrice’s face as she crouches over The Wanderer— _The Beast_ —like a panther with its prey. There’s grief, but it is made nearly unrecognizable by _rage_ and betrayal and too many other complex emotions that shudder down the freckled girl’s rigid limbs. There is no doubt that the brothers Beatrice lost were murdered; no one looks like this—shattered, dangerous, ready to kill—if their loved ones left this life peacefully.

And The Wanderer… isn’t fighting back.

Holly hopes this isn’t an admission of guilt.

Beatrice shuts down the equine’s dubious calls for order. The Wanderer addresses his attacker in a halting, intimate tone that Holly’s sensitive ears are unable to register. Holly is so stunned by Beatrice’s melting demeanor, her shift from violence to carefulness, that all she can do is stare like a spooked filly.

 _I loved him first. That’s why I hate him._

Holly is a fool for thinking she understood those words before. Shame scalds her. She thought she knew The Wanderer best, mistakenly believed she was the expert on his nature, yet this savage stranger and her Beast must have shared a bond that Holly cannot even begin to imagine.

Whatever the antlered creature tells her spills tears down Beatrice’s cheekbones. She grabs his shirt… only this time it is to lift him against her, not to threaten him with her might. Strong arms bracket his back like a shield. Beatrice’s gaze falls unseeing on the struggle-scuffed floor. This is not a romantic gesture between former lovers, or even a tender one to lend comfort or ask forgiveness. It is steady… and grounding… as if physical contact is the only thing preventing either one of them from cracking like porcelain or unspinning into cobwebs and dust. 

And the moment Beatrice embraces him, The Wanderer’s shadows are banished.

Initially, Holly fails to discern the abrupt change—so tarnished with black are The Wanderer’s clothes. The plane of his shoulders and the slope of his spine are a blanket of ink. The Appleonian realizes that she can actually _see him_ because the tipped lantern sketches out the shell of his visible ear and the haphazard cowlicks of his shaggy hair, details that were previously lost in impenetrable shadow. He looks distressingly human. _Mortal._ The roof of Holly’s mouth turns to thatch.

Beatrice’s chin fits into the notch where The Wanderer’s neck and shoulder join. In a low clear voice she asks, “When are you going to give this up?”

The Wanderer (Beast? Boy?) ekes out a shaky keen. Holly wonders if he’s going to return Beatrice’s hug. Instead, his keen wrings into a harsher sound—and he escapes the girl’s arms in a tumble of talons and kicking hooves and scrapes himself away from her, frantic, until he’s backed into the straw of an empty stall.

“H-how did you know?!” he howls. “When did you— _how_ did you—I was so _careful!_ ” His claws rake into his untamed mane; he grimaces with lips tightly pursed and eyes squeezed shut, as if by closing off his expression he can dam up whatever wants to escape from within him. “How did I m-mess this up?”

“Mess _what_ up?” Beatrice is sitting on the side of her hip where The Wanderer bucked her off. She looks like someone who lit a firecracker without knowing what would happen. “What are you _doing,_ Wirt?”

A canine snarl and a rumble of overhead thunder. “D̝óṉ't̀ ͚́c̹̲à̿l̞̑l̻ m̫e͊—”

“Wirt.” Beatrice repeats it with a clip on the ‘t’ that feels like a hard flick between the eyes. “That’s your name. It never _stopped_ being your name. Wirt, Wirt, Wirt—”

“Beast!” The Wanderer fires back desperately. “We’re not allowed to call each other by our own names, right? Isn’t that the rule?”

Confusion contorts Beatrice's forehead. “...Rule? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Seriously? You don’t remember b-beating the living _tar_ out of me?”

“Well, gee, you'll have to be more specific! It’s hard to remember _a single damn thing_ when you’ve been _delirious_ for days on end!” 

“Sorry for that,” sneers The Wanderer. His countenance is mocking, yet Holly swears he’s covering a genuine apology. That faint smirk he wears resembles a wince too closely. 

Beatrice jabs out an expletive that heats Holly’s ears and impatiently scrubs moisture from her eyelashes. “You’re _still_ pretending.” Her voice quakes like her clenched fists. “I s-swear to god I’ll kill you. You think you can fool me f-forever? I know you have some batshit _master plan_ to get revenge or justice or—or satisfaction or whatever so… can you tell me what’s going on? _Please?_ ”

“You won’t fall for the act,” The Wanderer mutters darkly, “and you don’t believe the truth. I… I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Since when are you sane?” cries Beatrice—really _cries,_ tears burning tracks to the corners of her open mouth as she bellows. “What did I miss? You lost your shit at my place. Y-You _stole_ your brother and…” Her vocal cords twitch and she shakes her head aggressively, swallowing. “You cursed my h-home. Took me away from my family. And now you’re… you’re...” Beatrice gestures emphatically to all of him. “Do you want to torture me, or not?!”

The Wanderer slumps in his stall. Not meeting Beatrice’s pointed, expectant gaze. Silent.

A hybrid cry between wail and screech lurches from Beatrice’s throat. The hysterical redhead raises a fist as if to smash the lantern away from her. “ _TALK TO ME!_ ”

Holly steps back into the ring before The Wanderer's core goes flying into the nearest wall. 

“You two have known one another for a while, haven’t you?” the Appleonian whickers softly, and Beatrice’s arm freezes in its arc. “I can tell… You seem to be very good at harming each other.”

The antler-crowned boy and the fiery lass glance to Holly in shock, having forgotten their audience. Rain skitters across the barn roof. “St-stay out of this,” Beatrice warns, spearing a finger at Holly. She’s breathing so hard her whole body jerks with every exhale. “You’ll just take his side.”

“No, I promise I won’t. I don’t fully understand what’s going on here…” (A high, friable cackle from Beatrice that ends in a hiccup) “...but you’ll get nowhere by arguing, except more hurt. If you can’t communicate then it’s no use hollering.”

“Thanks for your wisdom. You can leave now,” Beatrice says scathingly, dabbing mucus from under her nose. How she’s able to sit upright and lash out like a viper after what she’s endured is a mystery. 

The Wanderer is still a quiet huddled ball in the straw. He has to be a little younger than Holly, though the violet shadows under his eye sockets age him years. _Just a colt,_ Holly thinks, and her heart overflows with protectiveness for both him and Beatrice.

“Let’s start with one question at a time,” Holly continues calmly, ignoring how Beatrice bristles. She treads closer so that her position forms an equilateral triangle among them. “That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“We don’t _need you_ here,” Beatrice seethes. She gets up on one knee as if preparing to lunge at the equine girl. “I can interrogate my Beast without anybody’s help. He doesn’t deserve you _babying him._ ”

Holly sits primly in the dirt and folds her hands in her lap. “I’m a neutral party. I’ll be your mediator.”

The Wanderer watches her, wary, from his secluded corner. Beatrice sputters, “Neutral? You adore him!”

“I’ve learned that I am not as… familiar with him as you are,” Holly admits, peering shyly at the lantern. The fire inside jitters as though afraid; maybe it reflects the tempo of The Wanderer’s pulse. “Strangers don’t fight the way you two fight. So, um… let us begin? I’m supposed to be home before sunrise, as you’ll recall.”

Seconds pass with Beatrice glaring skeptically and The Wanderer setting his forehead on his drawn-up knees. The atmosphere in the barn _crackles._

Eventually, without prying her attention from Holly, Beatrice grumbles, “ _Fine._ We'll try your way. Apparently, his ex-best friend and merciful savior screaming at him wasn't enough." She sniffles mightily and hugs herself, hands tucked into her armpits and upper body hunched as if around a stomach ache. "What… what _really_ happened to Greg?”

It's a sullen, nervous mumble directed more to the Dark Lantern than the creature it rightfully belongs to. _She's scared,_ Holly realizes with a start. 

"Y-you said he's 'gone'," Beatrice ventures. "Gone, n-not… _'dead.'_ Did you..." Her lips shape _hurt_ and _lose_ and she settles on a squeaked, "s-send him away? Like the first time?"

The Wanderer braces himself. Nods against his bark-plated patellas. 

Beatrice folds at the waist until her brow is almost touching the floor. She cuts off an escalating moan by biting the insides of her cheeks as hard as she can and trembles with a life-draining, bone-deep relief. “Thank god,” she warbles.

Holly—who knows only that The Wanderer allegedly killed two of Beatrice’s brothers—pretends to follow the conversation for the sake of keeping this questionable peace. “Very, um… good! Now it’s The Wanderer’s turn to—”

“ _WHY THE HELL DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?!_ ”

A roar from Beatrice cows Holly to silence and makes The Wanderer shrink upon himself like a turtle retreating into his shell. Both of them fixate upon the freckled girl as if breaking eye contact means certain death. Beatrice fumes on all fours, _feral,_ and barrages her enemy with enough vitriol to strip the paint from the barn.

“You let me think Greg was DEAD! I thought you _KILLED HIM!_ I was mourning _him_ and mourning _YOUR DUMB ASS_ because I thought it was _my fault_ for not paying enough attention to you, not keeping Greg safe from you, not enforcing boundaries and keeping track of you because you’re _my freaking responsibility—_ ” Her shriek pierces the roof. The Wanderer watches her, rapt, eyes cycling through fearful shades of amber. “God damn you, Wirt! All this time I’m imagining Greg as a _tree_ and he’s back home, safe…”

“Hey now,” Holly peeps as Beatrice catches her breath. It shows how madly Beatrice thirsts for an explanation that she does not attack the Appleonian for reining her in. “This is, uh, p-progress, but we should still… still take turns. Why don’t we give Wir... The Wanderer a chance to explain himself?”

Unfortunately, the beastly boy is hyperventilating. While he struggles through false starts and syllables that won’t come, Beatrice wrestles herself under control. 

“Was it worth it, hurting me so bad?” she asks after a minute, purposefully rigid. The Wanderer glances away as though she slapped him. “Well, Wirt? Did you get what you wanted?”

The hue of The Wanderer’s irises whirls to dark cobalt blue. “Almost,” he whispers.

“If you wanted to destroy my trust, _congratulations—_ you have,” Beatrice growls… then remembers Holly sitting to her right, and that aggrieved rumble spreads into a defeated sigh. Her fingers curl absently around the handle of the Dark Lantern. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for this, Wirt.”

“You… sh-shouldn’t,” The Wanderer replies. 

“I thought we were friends.” 

"Bea…" The Wanderer can't finish her name. He leans, subtly, toward Beatrice, as if he would like to reach for her or lay down at her feet but does not have the strength to move.

The fact that Beatrice also appears to tilt in his direction, tugged by the gravity shared between them, tells Holly that it might be time to end tonight's heart-to-heart, while it's safe.

“You two gotta be plumb tuckered out,” nickers Holly cautiously. The pair of… _whatever_ they are to each other don’t acknowledge her; they are spent ashes and broken pottery, the terrible quiet of a wrecked room whose contents are so thrown into chaos it’s impossible to choose which piece to pick up first. “Are we maybe done fighting for tonight? Can we, um, pick this up tomorrow? After everybody has had some _much needed rest?_ ”

That latter statement is directed at both of them, poor rung-out creatures that they are. If The Wanderer were a normal person, he’d require hospitalization for sure; Beatrice has the limp resignation that follows an unavoidable trauma and stares unseeing at the pool of light the lantern casts over the ground. Neither give an indication that they’ve heard Holly at all. The Appleonian nods decisively as if they did anyway, though, and approaches Beatrice the same way she’d approach an injured wolf: slowly and with plenty of space to avoid getting bitten.

Beatrice spooks at Holly’s boot entering the lantern’s glow. “You’re still here?” she asks without venom—more honestly surprised than annoyed.

“It’s late,” says Holly. “Or… very early in the morning, depending on whom you ask. Regardless, bedtime is calling. Shall we head back to the inn?”

Beatrice gives her a side-eyed scrutiny to show she can’t believe she isn’t permanently banned from the Golden Delicious—or Appleonia—considering her public freak-out. “You’re too nice,” she mutters accusingly. “You shouldn’t put up with… people like me.”

“People like you seem to have a very good reason for being the way they are,” Holly observes, ears swiveling back to The Wanderer. She calls over her shoulder to the cowering spirit and fakes a confidence she does not feel after realizing how over-her-head this situation has risen. “You’ll stay here in the barn, right? You won’t… wander away in the night and leave us all alone with all these questions?”

Holly would swear that Beatrice glances up at her with gratitude.

“...No,” croaks The Wanderer. The lapis-lazuli of his eyes carves the shadows of his face deeper, more skeletal. “I’ll… st-stay. Here. In the barn.”

“Splendid. Then Beatrice will come back to town with me—”

“I’ll stay here too,” Beatrice interjects. Her shoulders square in spite of her fatigue at the horror dawning on The Wanderer’s visage. “Oh yeah, _Beast,_ I’m not letting you slink away from me. No more pretending. No more games. No more hiding. I’m watching you like a hawk.”

Beatrice’s stormy countenance promises that she _will_ get the answers she craves, and the timing in which she gets them and how many pieces she’ll have to snap The Wanderer into depends wholly on his cooperation. Holly isn’t stupid enough to argue. 

The dappled-brown filly finds several old blankets stashed in a supply closet that are covered in cobwebs but otherwise clean. Beatrice accepts hers as if they’re the finest duvets—and considering how Holly found her in the orchard, it would not be shocking to hear that Beatrice has slept in rougher conditions than a warm, dry barn. The Wanderer, on the other hand, shies away from Holly’s offer as if he’ll ruin the blankets by touching them; Holly places one near his stall anyhow, in case he wants it later.

“I’ll check on you two in the morning,” Holly promises hesitantly from the barn entrance. Far-spaced raindrops plink over the dirt path at her back. “So… please don’t kill each other while I’m gone? Please.”

“We won’t,” answers Beatrice, ominous, holding the Dark Lantern vigilantly on her lap. 

Holly’s only recourse is to head home, before the stormclouds open up and she loses the courage to leave The Wanderer alone with the one he wronged.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

The inside contents of Beatrice have been scooped out, heart and lungs and guts and all, to allow each ugly, vicious emotion she has to expand to its full capacity. Betrayal scorches from the base of her abdomen to the top of her scalp. Rage conducts itself like electricity around her ribcage. Frustration roils where her stomach should be, and humiliation too, for how long she’d been fooled by this antler-wearing cretin and how _easily_ he’d fooled her. 

She wants to throttle Wirt until he gives her the apology she’s owed. She wants him to grovel and kiss her shoelaces for wasting both their time, for forcing her to sweat over her tether-tightrope, for _lying about Greg,_ but the straw looks _extremely_ comfortable and Beatrice knows she’ll pass out before she’s able to tussle with The Beast again. So, alternatively, she wraps a blanket around her shoulders and stews.

Across from her, Wirt paints the barn floor sapphire and folds his limbs to his chest, unspeaking, unmoving except for a subtle quiver running through him. An oily film of his blood sticks to Beatrice’s palms where she’d grappled him. _He’s hurt bad,_ part of her worries.

 _Serves him right,_ snipes the other part.

“You look like crap,” she announces aloud, opting for a less colorful word at the end. When Wirt doesn’t answer, she tugs her blanket tighter around herself. “...This is where you say, ‘you too, Beatrice.’”

No reaction. She cannot discern her own anxiety from anger.

Teeth almost touching, she tries once more. “Th...that axe wound… is it…” _Worse? Healing? The only wound you have?_

“Hurts,” Wirt replies hoarsely. He closes his eyes and the lantern is the sole source of light among them.

“...Can I see it?”

Twin yellow stars open wide. The Beast gawks at her and scoots imperceptibly farther away with a shake of his head. “It’s f-fine,” he stammers. “Worry about yourself—”

“Show me.” A command, not a request. Beatrice stands—wavers from lightheadedness, waiting for her circulation to balance—and walks toward Wirt’s stall with the Dark Lantern at her hip.

For every step she takes, he backs into the stall. “Beatrice, no, it’s n-nothing—”

“Listen,” Beatrice grits impatiently, “I wandered the woods and sweated through the same clothes for over a week. I haven’t taken a bath since _this afternoon._ Holly found me, a stranger, looking like a senile vagrant in that orchard, stealing apples off trees, and the entire town watched me lose my _damn mind_ in real time tonight—so I think you owe it to me to put that ridiculous modesty aside and suck it up and _take off your freaking shirt._ ”

He bites his lower lip, considering, and Beatrice blows out an aggravated sigh. “Oh my GOD, doofus, I yanked arrows out of your back—remember?! It’s not like I haven’t seen your virginal upper torso before. Stop making it weird.”

Wirt’s ears darken with a blush and his pupils flicker the faintest flit of pink. “I’m… I’m n-not making it _weird,_ I was saying you should f-focus on—on yourself, first, you should really be in a _real_ bed under a sturdy roof w-with somebody to take care of you—”

“You can’t tell me what to do after you didn’t give me a choice during your cute little pretend-game,” Beatrice simpers acridly. Her mock-smiling eyes narrow. “You know I’ll just rip your shirt off your puny, scrawny twig body if you argue—so strip, Beast.”

Wirt starts unbuttoning his top as quickly as his feeble talons can, which is the same laborious pace as that of an arthritic grandfather. His flesh under the fabric is pale and mottled with shades of healing bruises… yellow-green and purple-red concentrated in the upper left quadrant of his chest, where the black edges of a scab furrow down his collar bone. When he reaches the last button, it’s obvious he’ll be unable to remove his shirt on his own; Beatrice glances at him briefly for permission before sliding his sleeves from his shoulders and down his arms…

She blurts the same curse that made Holly flush. The gash on Wirt’s shoulder isn’t new—but it’s by no means fully _healed,_ resembling a chunk of roughly carved obsidian rather than the smooth-grooved bark of his extremities. Veins of ink weave outward from the wound like roots and fade as they dive deeper under his skin. This hadn’t been here when Wirt ran from the mill… and the Woodsman had slammed Wirt in the _spine_ with his axe at the cabin—

“Shit, Wirt!” Beatrice leans around him and gasps, the muscles of her back spasming with phantom pain. This injury is worse. How can it be _worse_ than what she anticipated, when she _heard_ the blade cleave him, heard the awful sound he made?! And she’d… she had tackled him as if he were capable of fighting back or defending himself, she threw him right onto this gouge— “Jesus, how are you still alive?!”

Wirt shrugs, and how is he _shrugging,_ the motion is asymmetrical to account for his left shoulder but Beatrice can’t understand how he’s able to use his left arm _at all._ “Can’t die,” he murmurs bitterly. “You know that…”

“Don’t be a smartass,” Beatrice snaps shakily. Her hand hovers over the valley of coagulated onyx that digs along the medial border of his right scapula, its center glistening wetly from being reopened. New fingers of blood-sap bead and drip from the scab’s scaly perimeter. As with his shoulder wound, blackness seeps from this split to travel in rivulets toward layers of muscle; these rivulets fade outward from their source but tangle with those coming from a recent Beastly feature that Beatrice had merely glimpsed at the mill.

She mentally compares the ridges arising from Wirt’s spinal column to the bumpy armor of an alligator or the rough, spiky knots sported by some kinds of tree bark. They’re not quite spikes, but they aren’t just _bumps_ either. Beatrice goes as if to touch one of these prominences to test its novel texture… yet she can’t tear her focus away from the horror adjacent to them. She tastes bile.

“You absolute imbecile.” An insult hissed under her breath to distract from the lump in her throat. “You monumental dimwit. You stupid, stupid Beast…”

“Am I a s-stupid Beast, or a… a smartass?” Wirt quips sourly. He glares blue-sulphur at her over his uninjured shoulder. 

Beatrice frowns and sits against the opposite wall of the stall, drawing the Dark Lantern to her side. “Both.”

“Not the negative opinion of me that I was aiming for,” Wirt sighs, “but close enough, I guess.”

He turns from her as if to bed down for the night, pointedly ignoring her to avoid the rest of a discussion that they desperately need to be having. Beatrice’s knuckles pale on the lantern’s handle—the lantern _he won’t take back_ —and she inhales with the intent to scream.

“You should never have left me out of it,” she yelps instead. Her eyes mist for the thousandth time (damn it, _damn it_ ) but she doesn’t attempt to halt her tears. Screw it. Beatrice wants honesty from Wirt, so she’ll be honest too. She’ll be so honest his empty head will explode. “As s-soon as you had a grip, you sh-should have _told me,_ you should’ve said what was going on… I would’ve had your back. I’ve _always_ taken care of you, r-right?”

“Beatrice…”

“If you wanted your lantern back, I would’ve helped you get it. We could’ve come up with a plan _together._ And Greg was s-safe with me and my family until he g-got outside when you were _crazy_ and—and you should have explained what the _hell_ all that was about! Why the _shit_ did you think you had to do everything by yourself? Why was _manipulating me_ the better option?!”

Wirt laughs. It’s hollow and breathless and short-lived, and when he’s done he hides his face in his claws. “I _tried_ to tell you.”

If his voice were cloth, one could read newspaper through it. Beatrice flinches at this unanticipated release of information and rears in his direction, blanket falling to the hay.

“Are you kidding? _When?!_ Because I for _sure_ don’t remember you coming to me with a genius plot to send Greg off and torment an old man and his daughter—”

“After I… took Greg from the mill.” Wirt gulps and his dry throat clicks. “After we escaped the r...r...ravens.” One of his hands unconsciously drops to his neck. “I w-wanted to explain th-that… _he_ was controlling me somehow, that he was r-reaching through me to get to Greg…”

“The old Beast?” Beatrice asks lowly, as if that devil would manifest in the shadows upon hearing his name. “You… killed him, though, I was there—”

“He͙'͂s ̙n̞o͂t̩ ͕d̠ea͍d͒.” Wirt utters a muted snarl. 

Beatrice blinks past a vertigo whirl of déjà vu, the certainty she’s heard this before even though she can’t recall the talk Wirt is referring to. When Wirt stole Greg he was _insane,_ garbling his words like a demon, he _couldn’t_ have had enough of his mind to justify his behavior. No way. She wouldn’t have missed that.

“You choked me,” Wirt adds softly. The claws around his neck close, pantomiming. “You were… already convinced I was too f-far gone, and it seemed easier to… run away. I knew you h...hated me. Didn’t w-want to bother you or your f-family anymore, I’m just a burden…” Those smoky tears of his trickle from under the hand that’s hiding his expression and plip from his wobbling chin. “It wasn’t safe there. I’m a w-walking _target_ so I…”

“You’re hopeless, you know that?” she informs him. Her stomach heaves as if she’s about to wail or puke. “Only you would do such a convoluted, masochistic…”

But then Beatrice remembers who she's talking to. That this broken Beast was once a boy who thought his love for clarinet and poetry were hideous secrets, who was _terrified_ to share his feelings with a crush because he thought himself below her standards. She remembers that rejection and humiliation are Wirt's deepest fears, and she knows the insane lengths he'll contort himself through to avoid them. This is the same boy with zero self-confidence and mountains of self-loathing, as likely to be wiltingly shy as infuriatingly pretentious, and suddenly Beatrice cannot freaking _believe_ she fell for his theatrical, melodramatic lies. 

Pushing everyone away to free them and protect himself is _precisely_ what a blockheaded martyr would do.

“Sorry,” says Wirt through his claws. “I’m s-sorry, I didn’t… didn’t mean…” He sobs and can’t stop, letting go of failure and exhaustion and the cruel, ravenous fear that drove him to burn all his bridges down as a last resort.

And Beatrice, who all but handed him the matches, is speechless. 

Rain unleashes its torrents on the barn in response to The Beast’s woe. The temperature in the barn chills enough for Beatrice to shiver from cold in addition to wracking guilt and resentment, and she eyes Wirt’s shirtless stick-thin body with critical appraisal. 

After a beat of uncomfortable hesitation, she drapes the blanket Holly left for him unceremoniously over his scabbed back. Wirt sucks in a sharp breath at the contact and regards her like a hunted deer with an arrow in its heart. 

“Tell me now,” Beatrice presses. She takes the wrist of his hand around his throat and guides it downward, encouraging him to breathe. “Tell me what you wanted to tell me then, what you were doing while I was chasing you. Tell me why you did it. Explain it all to me.” Assured that he won’t flee, she lowers herself into the straw, head pillowed on one of her arms and blanket tucked around her like a cocoon. Not going anywhere. “I’ll listen. Like _I_ should have done.”

Wirt’s bony frame drowns under his blanket; he clutches at it as if he isn’t sure what to do with it. “You… you can’t interrupt me, all right?”

“Got it.”

Wirt exhales in relief, or resignation. He faulters finding a place to begin, how to elucidate his choices and lack thereof… but soon he hits his poet’s rhythm and spills everything. The Edelravens. The sacrifices. Greg, the witches, the Woodsman, his brilliant insight into how to free Beatrice by handing off his own soul, his conviction that the bluebird clan was better off without him. He sobs and catches himself, catches his breath, continues. He talks until his already thinning voice cuts off entirely, reduced to a sandpaper rasp. Then, and only then, does Beatrice speak.

“That’s enough, Beast.”

He peers at her uncertainly, having puddled into the hay himself near the end of his speech. He lies on his stomach facing her, chin on his crossed forelimbs like a dog. 

Beatrice doesn’t smile, but she isn’t glowering, either. She yawns deliberately and rolls over to nestle against the entrance of the stall, blocking Wirt’s exit. “Sleep now. Holly will be upset if she finds out we’ve been up all night.”

“Bea… um…” Wirt sounds very, very aware that there is a girl intending to sleep less than three feet away from him. In the same room. Well, the same _stall,_ but the concept was the same. “I should… m-move to a—”

“Sleep. _Now._ ”

And with the weather drumming a lullaby above them, and Beatrice _safe,_ and the Dark Lantern dancing like a campfire in the corner to warm them both, and no Edelmonsters to steal his brother in the night… Wirt finds it is impossible to fight the weight that shutters his eyelids and brings him down to the fragrant softness of the hay, the Unknown murmuring encouragement for its weary Beast to rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus Track: "Pour More Oil" by Her Name is Calla
> 
> Credit to Whiggity for showing me that lovely song (and for helping me with the first two sections of this part, one thousand times thank you).
> 
> Work on this series will slow down as I move and begin grad school, but it will not stop; writing POTU is a great escape for me and there's still plenty of story left to go. I appreciate everyone who has clung to the handlebars through Wirt's ~~idiocy~~ suffering. 
> 
> As a reminder: this is not meant to be a "ship fic." However, I absolutely plan on implementing future fluff. These kiddos deserve it.
> 
> One kudos = one head pat for Wirt.


End file.
